Queer Judgments Project

We’re thrilled to announce Queer Judgments is out today! This collection covers topics relating to decriminalising gay sex, HIV, asylum, healthcare, reproductive justice, gender transition, and much more! It is available to download on a pay what you feel basis: counterpress.org.uk/publications...

“Intersex is the word that provided me with a conceptual and interpretive framework… I went from seeing myself as a sick, abnormal and malformed person to asserting myself as a someone who embodies one of the many bodily forms of human anatomical variability.” Happy Intersex Awareness Day!

“The High Court has ruled that regulations banning new prescriptions of puberty blockers for young people with gender dysphoria were unlawful.” This is welcome news from NZ. We need more courts to scrutinise political decisions that undermine people’s ability to access life saving health care. 🇳🇿🏳️‍⚧️

The notion that queerness is "un-African" is one of Britain's most successful lies, and most enduring exports.  From the archive #BHM2026 👇

Today is National Coming Out Day. Many governments censor and police LGBTQ lives. The media caricature our existence as “ideologies.” Visibility is not easy or desirable in these circumstances. So, let’s work collectively on creating spaces where LGBTQ folk flourish without the demand to “come out.”

“Tokyo’s policy seems more concerned with projecting an international image of Japan as a progressive and inclusive country than with implementing substantive measures to advance those rights in practice.” Improving the lives of LGBT+ people requires much more than political claims about “respect.”

“My lesbianism… informs the way I move and feel in my body, how I serve my community, the reasoning behind my politics.” It’s International Lesbian Day today! Check out Lydia Jupp clearly explain why lesbian and trans rights/lives are mutually reinforcing. www.starobserver.com.au/opinion/my-l...

“Could queering offer another form of judgment, one more colourful, poetic, musical, and playful than that offered by law and legal format – judgment as discernment rather than decision?” Sean Mulcahy reviews Queer Judgments in Alternative Law Journal. Read: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Law’s a Drag presents: Hate Crimes Live! 🌟 In July, Dr @jgreenwoodreeves.bsky.social and Dr Rosie Fox co-ran a public engagement cabaret in Leeds city centre, explaining recent changes to hate crimes legislation in England and Wales. Learn more about Hate Crimes Live! below👇 tinyurl.com/3navdn2n

New academic year, new blog series! Check out '…six, seven, eight… every LAWYER can dance! Drawing on Dance to Teach Law' by Maria Federica Moscati ⬇️🩰 www.slsa.ac.uk/post/six-sev... This the first in our guest edited series on Creative Legal Education. A perfect pre-teaching read.

“If they attack and pressure those who feel little to no sexual attraction or interest in sex, that is a gateway to attacking anyone who does have sex in any way that’s not ‘approved’ or ‘acceptable.’” Niger’s criminalising of asexuality is about enforcing patriarchal ideas of gender and sexuality.

“Gay Pride Week will hit all the institutions of our oppression… [and] seek to change the mind of the prejudiced, the fearful, the conditioned, the sexually repressed, all those who in oppressing us, oppress themselves.” 15 September 1973: the first national Gay Pride Week march happened in Sydney.

This article highlights the 'postcode lottery' - uneven impact - of these new transphobic policies. That was the case for S28 also. It's uneven because some are finding the agency to push back. We all have a responsibility to do this in the spheres in which we have leverage and influence.

“The organisation said 50 activists had been detained, more than 10 taken after police raids on their homes. It said that authorities had blocked several websites and social media accounts linked to LGBTQ+ organisations.” Chilling to see Turkish authorities escalate their attacks against LGBT folk.

“There is no reason to doubt the Full Court's construction of s 7D(1) and (2) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth).” Australia’s highest court has refused leave to anti-trans folks seeking to overturn the finding that “women” includes trans women for the purposes of sex discrimination law. 🏳️‍⚧️

I’m in Taipei this week to present a talk on critical-creative queer legal work as part of @queerjudgments.bsky.social at the National Taiwan University (8th September). Come along if you’re around. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇹🇼

We’re here. And we’re always queer. 🫶🏿🌈🫶🏾

"What becomes possible when people committed to rethinking legal education come together?" Some members of the exciting new Critical Legal Pedagogies of Race and Empire Network (CLPRE) led by @folukeifejola.bsky.social share thoughts about potential and practice. ⚖️🎓 www.youtube.com/watch?v=G405...

I appreciate that Dolly Parton refused to participate in "dress respectability" and, by her own account, modeled her aesthetic after a town "tramp," who she thought was beautiful. She separated aesthetics from character and understood "classiness" to be about how you treat people, not how you dress.

“A federal judge in Texas struck down a 2023 state law Tuesday that sought to restrict drag shows, ruling it was unconstitutional.” Nice to see a judge cite Dolly Parton in their judgment upholding the right of drag artists to perform. Bans on drag are just a flagrant violation of queer expression.

As we come together on the challenges we face, & the responsibilities we must reclaim, we are reminded that critical and collective forms of education begin with critique, move toward refusal of injustice, & culminate in the development of ideas, practices, techniques, & powers to re-world together…

“There is no such position as academic neutrality. The failure to critique the status quo is a political act of complicity in its inequalities, its injustices, and exclusions.” The Feminist Collective offers a manifesto about “academic freedom” for those of us who are struggling against injustice.

As women, racialised, LGBT, disabled, working class folk have entered academia, we/they have exposed how knowledge is not some abstract thing to “discover.” Knowledge is produced in particular (hierarchical) social and political settings. Academia, like other institutions, reproduces inequalities.

Who designs the rules of inclusion? Listen to Kevin Guyan, author of 'Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion', discuss this and more on Queer Lit podcast. 🎧Listen here: https://bit.ly/4wYaKCb 📘Kevin's book: https://bit.ly/45YorFl

“The rollback of LGBTQ+ rights is a warning: movements that seek to undermine LGBTQ+ people are those that seek to control all of us—our freedom of expression, our personal medical decisions, and our privacy.” Fascist politics destroys our freedoms and it’s spreading globally. We must disrupt it.

Racist systems (like slavery, colonialism, apartheid, etc) were built by academics from the social to biological sciences who legitimised racism as “objective truths” about society. This is why academic institutions need to confront the racial logics built into their systems of knowledge production.

“Academics want to promote their research outside of the university… However, in an increasingly queer- & transphobic public environment, this is becoming more difficult & more risky for researchers working on LGBTQ+ topics.” Apt report on how LGBTQ+ scholars in the UK navigate public harassment.

Minoritised academics face organised harassment for writing about racism, transphobia, genocide, etc. They/we are subject to forms of hostile exposure (whether in media or politics), which proves the point for why such scholarship is necessary in the first place. They/we all deserve so much better.

In 2019, the British government circulated a call for evidence to learn about the experiences of people with variations in sex characteristics. After 7 years, the report has finally been published and exposes the stigma, shame, and secrecy facing intersex folk. Read here: www.gov.uk/government/c...

A few weeks ago, after a 7 year delay, the UK government quietly dropped the results of their 2019 Call for Evidence on variations in sex characteristics The results are striking but will of course seem deeply familiar to anyone working in this field. www.gov.uk/government/c...

🚨 BREAKING We are supporting a legal challenge to the Code of Practice. And we need your help. Join us in fighting back 👇

A new essay for all my trans siblings and our allies. "As the UK enters a new era of state-mandated segregation, I find myself asking: was it all worth it?"

“Instead of relying only on couples living together, researchers will be able to understand the health of people with diverse sexual orientations much more comprehensively.” A promising change to the Australian Census. We need better data practices to account for the rich diversity of queer lives.

📢 The Gender + Sexuality Data Lab is hiring a Research Assistant to join its project, ‘Box Breakers: Improving Organisational Data Practices for Minoritised Communities’.

“Every single person who marched today is proof that we are not going anywhere, that our joy is louder than their hate, and that London Trans+ Pride will keep fighting, keep loving and keep growing until every trans person is safe, seen, and free.” Solidarity with all marching for trans justice. 🏳️‍⚧️

Over 150,000 came out in full force for London Trans+ Pride to say loud and clear: Trans rights are human rights 💖

Solidarity with all of our queer siblings in Berlin. No-one should be made scared to march in defence of their community, and in celebration of who they truly are. It is more important than ever that we all come together with pride, and look after one another.

Well, the @bishopsgateinst.bsky.social has got how to label toilets properly... 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

It’s official: I’ve been promoted to Professor of Legal Humanities and Human Rights at Manchester Law School. My ability to think/research/write/teach anything is only possible because of the communities that continue to nourish me. So now, I’m just going to keep on sparkling. 🌈✨

I won't say that this was enjoyable to record because talking about how my queer community is being demonised is always awful, but it is an important conversation with people whose company I value and enjoy. Thanks to @sandraduffy.bsky.social, @senthorun.bsky.social, and @adrienneringin.bsky.social

The Scottish Parliament's decision to collect and present data based on 'biological sex' has made it harder for researchers to use data to understand and tackle inequalities. 📝 I've written to the Scottish Parliament requesting information on this change: kevinguyan.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

Just finished reading this fab collection of critical-creative writing pieces (“Abolition Science Fiction”) that invites us to imagine a world beyond prisons. We need more of this utopian thinking in our pursuits of justice and community. You can download the book for free here: abolitionscifi.org

Flaunting some gay propaganda at work.

The Queer Judge is taking a new shape and going places. It was written in the stars that the Queer Judge had to visit the UK Surpreme Court sooner or later. We got up to listening to poetry and doing some dancing. Watch this space - the Queer Judgments Project is letting its creative juices flow!

I’m so excited to be back in Oz to teach a course on Law, Gender & Sexuality with a focus on feminist and queer judgment writing. At a time when many public institutions are censoring so-called “woke” subjects, it’s a privilege to be able to research and teach things that matter to our communities.

“The conservative judges’ written opinions were replete with transphobia — and even the dissenting, liberal position from the court failed to fundamentally uphold the rights of transgender athletes.” We have to dismantle institutionalised transphobia that results in these horrific legal decisions.

The US Supreme Court has upheld state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams. Transgender kids should have the same opportunities as any other kids — lawmakers in the US and elsewhere should make sure of it.

The scale of disinformation about trans people is breathtakingly painful. These moral panics are orchestrated by institutions that seek to normalise transphobic segregation. We must continue to challenge media, political, legal rhetoric that erodes trans lives under the guise of “defending biology.”

The trans sports ban are almost completely an invention of the media, conservative and mainstream. it has been years of lies, of shoddy fact checking on just completely false conservative claims, years of phony concern trolling.